Beginning in the late nineteenth century, intellectuals in places such as Egypt, Istanbul, Beirut, and Tehran saw a strong tie between national (and imperial) success and female education. As World War I drew to a close and countries such as Lebanon and Syria were assigned borders and mandatory governments, questions about the role of female education and nation continued. This paper contributes to the scholarship on girls’ education, nationalist movements, and the women’s press in the Middle East during the interwar period as it examines the rhetoric on girls’ education as seen in the women’s press in Beirut, Lebanon from the Paris peace talks in 1919 to the formal establishment of the French mandate in 1922. While much has been said (and much was made) about calls for female education as a means to create modern wives and mothers for the new nations, less attention has been given to the relationship between girls’ education and their subsequent role in the national project outside that of wife and mother. Through a close examination of al-Fajr (The Dawn), a representative women’s monthly magazine published beginning in 1919, this paper argues that girls’ education, as seen in the pages of the press, was a key site in the creation of the new nation. By examining the women’s press in the context of the nation and nationalist movements, this paper suggests that not only were women’s magazines primary sites in nationalist discussions, but that the debates contained within their pages related, implicitly and explicitly, to a larger nationalist cause. Further, gender was a key component in constructions of national identity and the physical space of the school was a site for the creation and propagation of nationalist ideologies. Indeed, through an examination of the rhetoric on girls’ education in the contents of al-Fajr in the years between the end of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the French mandate, one sees the important place gender held in constructing national identity, as well as the role of schools and education in furthering nationalist agendas.